GoW artist: Kratos was almost a “little elf character”

Lead environmental artist for the first God of War game, Ken Feldman, has revealed that the first design concept for Kratos had him depicted as this “little elf character”.

Thank Hades that didn’t happen.

Speaking with Official PlayStation Magazine UK (via CVG), Feldman said it took a while to come up with Kratos, and while his character was being fiddled with, different ideas of what his backstory was came up.

One had him as an escaped slave, another, a “blind monk carrying a baby”.

“I think it took us a year-and-a-half to come up with Kratos,” said Feldman. “That was the most difficult thing. Everything had to be based around this character – the story, the weapons. The first guy we came up with was a little elf character, he was hysterical. His animations looked like Disney.”

However, thankfully, lead designer David Jaffe had a better idea of what he wanted our hulking hero to look like.

“I wanted to make a game that really spoke to my passion for action-adventure movies,” he added. “My love of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, Greek Myths – specifically the Harryhausen stuff like Jason And The Argonauts, Clash Of The Titans – and my love of games like Adventure on the Atari 2600, and Devil May Cry and ICO, and kind of mashing that into one thing.”

Jaffe said during DICE this week that his next game would somewhere in the middle of God of War and Calling All Cars.

God of War III hits next month, and you can watch the latest video released for it here.

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